Most of us are aware that there is less wildlife around – either because we are old enough to have seen the changes, or because we have watched David Attenborough, Chris Packham or others telling us of the decline.
At ACE, we are trying to increase biodiversity on the school site and Alwoodley 2030 are working to increase the biodiversity in Alwoodley generally. In order to know if we are being successful we need to measure biodiversity. We have found some wonderful tools to do this:
- iNaturalist (and Seek) – these apps are both produced by iNaturalist and install on phones and tablets. You can take a picture of the pant, insect, animal or bird (if you can!) and the app hopefully identifies it. It also records it onto the iNaturalist database including the location and time so we can use the recordings to see what has been recorded in the school grounds or in Alwoodley. If you use the Seek app you can win badges!
- Merlin – this amazing app can record bird song and identify the bird. It also has loads of infomation about the birds and recordings of bird song so that you can learn the songs. I’ve been using this app over the last month or so and have been amazed at how many Blackcaps there are singing around me!
We will be using these two apps to help us identify wildlife in school. If you have a suitable device why not use them at home to identify the wild world that surrounds you!
Fascinating – I just discovered that the spotless ladybird eating my Iilly is in fact a Lilly beetle! Looking forward to learning to identify bird song. Thanks for sharing!